


cumulonimbus

by OrangePatrick



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Anxiety Attacks, Fluff, M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 13:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14874833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangePatrick/pseuds/OrangePatrick
Summary: noun.a cloud forming a towering mass with a flat base at fairly low altitude and often a flat top, as in thunderstorms.(a fic composed of 10 poems, from Roman’s POV.)





	cumulonimbus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingdany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingdany/gifts).



i: infuriating / infatuating

you’re so infuriating and you know it, don’t you?

hovering, the sky darkening, electricity clapping thunder

a split second before the lightning strikes, burning.

the clouds swollen with rain make a home

in the bruises under your eyes, bloodshot and sleepless--

but you’re dry as a desert, sharp, pricking, without

an oasis within you, not even a mirage of kindness.

your tongue lashes like a snake’s, venom dripping

from your gums with every barbed wire words that slips

between your lips. you leave me bruised, wounds weeping

and seeping with rage-- with insecurity. i regret the day

that i pulled you into my hurricane, with all your

chipped black nail polish and bulky headphones,

the hand-stitching on your sweater-- infuriating.  _ infuriating. _

 

ii: disbelief / desire

you’re so unbelievable and you know it, don’t you?

the peal of bells, choirs of angels, whatever wasted cliche

of heavenly sound associated with churches, because

hearing your laugh was a religious experience. my soul

physically left my body when you clapped your hoodie-clad

hand over your mouth, the sound still slipping out between

the cracks of your fingers. your eyes crinkled

like wrapping paper on christmas eve, irises gleaming.

my heart swallowed the sound like a black hole,

bursting in my chest. i think i might have died for a second,

but then it was gone, your eyes dimmed and your mouth

flattened. you stopped looking up after that--

unbelievable. i would build a temple to that sound,

throw away everything just to hear you laugh again, but it

wasn’t me. it won’t be, so long as you fall flat every time

your eyes meet mine. no crinkling, no glittering,

apathetic (atheistic)  _ unbelievable. _ (heartbreaking.)

 

iii: heartless / hurting

it’s fine, i never even liked you anyway, especially the way

you made him cry, the way your barbed wire words

cut into my best friend, the way you left acidic burns

spreading across his skin. i never even liked you anyway.

you can glare at me all you want, but don’t you dare

ever even look at him again. his heart is too soft for you.

his smile is too sunny for you, your thundercloud eyes.

i don’t know why patton chose you. (please don’t smile

anywhere around me ever again. i couldn’t stand it--)

 

iv: panicking / placating

i want to cling to my anger, my grudges. i don’t want

to think about how your shoulders trembled, your lungs

heaving as you drowned in oxygen and dust under

the theater stage. one two three four, hold til seven,

eightsevensixfivefourthreetwoone repeat after me.

you just kept gasping, avoiding eye contact, but as soon

as i touched you, you leaned in like my hand was a raft

in your overwhelming sea of anxiety. tell me three things

that you can see: shoes, ropes, me. “where’d you learn

how to do this? why do you even care? i’m sorry i’m s--”

i can’t think about your flat line mouth, empty stares,

when the storm clouds under your eyes are finally

bursting with rain. there is no lightning. there is no

electricity. my heart hurts, and then your breathing

is finally steady, the only sound in the cramped space

underneath the theater stage-- “sorry. i’m going

to leave now. thanks, i guess. but don’t tell

anybody.” okay, dark and stormy. i hope that the clouds

feel a little less heavy now. i hope maybe--

 

v: isolation / ideation

we are all just islands chained together by tides.

when you sit diagonally from me and pick at your food

like it was made for the ants that will eat after you,

i can’t help but wonder how far your shores are from mine.

how far does the coral reef extend between us?

or does it even grow at all? i never apologized for the

hurricane. you never apologized for the lightning strikes.

forests tend to grow back stronger after forest fires;

the ash and decay makes the soil richer for whatever

grows through it after. i don’t think that surviving

your thunderstorm has helped me grow any better

in the landscape of your brain. i don’t think that you think

about me that frequently, or with that much depth--

i don’t think that you think that i have depth, or that

the waters that stretch between our shores run that deep,

but i’m in over my head here. i don’t want to say that i’m

drowning, but it’s getting a bit harder to breathe.

 

vi: souring / sighing

sour gummy worm taste, sugarless lemonade

thought we were past this phase but i guess

i was wrong again this time. my heartbeat is

breaking my rib cage, diaphragm disappearing

leaving me breathless and bleeding. you smiled

again today so i started digging my own grave:

six feet deep, shovel clanging like your laughter,

making me torn between slowing down and

working faster, eager to hear it over and over

but hesitant to let it be over. it’s a bittersweet

symphony, and you’ve reduced me back down

to cliches again. i wish that i knew how to just

be your friend, neptune and jupiter and nothing

more, but your eyes are just so warm. how can

we not be venus and the sun? i’m spinning,

reeling backwards with you at my center,

the planet of the goddess of love-- i’m mercury,

one day with you feels like two years (would

two years with you feel like one day? probably)

and my mood swings so drastically around you

because i’m too close to have any kind of

atmosphere, always running too hot or too cold,

no middle ground-- but who am i to talk, with

you and your solar flares, your cold spots. how

do i get into the goldilocks zone with you? just

right for life, just right for evolving into something.

 

vii: pining / passivity

the cobwebs in your bedroom, halloween decorations

kept around year-round for the sake of nostalgic

delicacy, remind me of the cobwebs growing over

our rocky and stumbling past path. if you were sally,

would you let me be jack? i don’t want to be the one

who stitches you back together; i know for a fact

that you can do it just fine on your own, but if you’d

let me, i’d like to hold the spool of thread, pass it through

the eye of the needle when you don’t have two hands

and then pass it off to you so you can put all your pieces back

where they properly belong. i don’t want to be the scientist

dissecting you, but if you’d like to be the one who talks

me down from sleighs and destruction, i wouldn’t mind

listening to you. by the light of your laptop screen singing,

“if you don’t mind / i’d like to join you by your side…”

 

viii: storms / saints

i never liked rain when i was young,

hated the way that it confined me inside,

darkened rooms with fluorescent lights.

i don’t like the rain in your eyes now,

hate the way that it draws you inside your mind,

darkens your face, the light in your eyes.

i don’t like feeling helpless against the beasts

in your brain, unable to fight the intangible feeling

of fleeing up the fire escape. i know i used the

metaphor of digging my own grave over you,

but sometimes i know that i have to breath for both

of us, melt the ice from your lungs when the fire

inside them goes out, snuffed by the storm.

more than thunder, i am scared of storms without lightning.

when the electricity leaves your veins, i don’t know

how to bring you back from the blankness. (i’m

not frankenstein. no, and darling,

you’re definitely no monster. and now i’m sidetracking,

thinking about whose last name could belong to who--)

 

ix: reflect / refract

you’re so beautiful and you don’t know it, do you?

the depth of your dark eyes, those lashes, with all your

chipped black nail polish and bulky headphones,

the hand-stitching on your sweater-- gorgeous,

and creative, and kind, and intelligent, yes, because

you’re the only one of us who ever manages to keep up

with logan when he goes on a tangent-- and you just

don’t even know it, do you? i guess then that i’ll just

have to keep on reminding you: i think that you

are the most beautiful person i’ve ever met, even

from the days that i found you infuriating and unbelievable,

there was just something about you. if i asked

to hold hands, would you? i’m starting to think that maybe

you’d say yes. (please say yes please say yes please say--)

if i asked to spend time with you, alone, just us,

four slashed in half to two, would you? i’m starting to think

that maybe you’d say yes. (you said yes, you said yes,

you said yes!)

 

x: sunshine / smile

my skin is still buzzing where your hands left trails of electricity,

popping through my veins like champaign so pleasantly.

i don’t know why i had the idea that your lips might taste like

cherry limeade, or strawberry, but i should have known that you

weren’t really a chapstick kind of guy. could you taste the raspberry

on mine? that church bell laughter rang out after i tripped down

your front porch step, dizzy and dreaming, already thinking

about the next time i’d be able to hold you. it was supposed

to rain today, the forecast set to cloudy for the whole week,

but there was nothing but sunshine in the glint of your teeth

just behind your parted lips when you smiled at me, pulled me in.

i think i’ve found summer in the winter, warmth from your hands.

where i used to see a desert, i now see the sand dunes

standing like castle turrets to hide the water behind them. remember

when i wrote poetry about depth and lack of it? i never thought

that you’d be lake michigan. i never thought that i’d stand still enough

to ever be more than a hurricane, sweeping you up in my wake.

but then you smiled at me, virgil, and i’ll never be the same.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!! this was a ton of fun to write. shout out to dani for giving me excited commentary and motivation to actually do this <3


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